A Review of "The Defenders" Saga: Daredevil (season 2)

Following Marvel's Jessica Jones, in March of 2016, came the long-awaited second season of Marvel's Daredevil. Unlike the first season, this season was hit-and-miss.

The season opens with Daredevil chasing several men, and beating them up wherever he can corner them. He finds them in kitchens, in alleyways, and finally in a church. As Daredevil, Matt is making headlines cleaning up the city as a vigilante of the night, but his daytime best friend and law colleague Franklin "Foggy" Nelson is not so accepting of Matt's Daredevil persona. Meanwhile, Karen Page, the secretary at Nelson & Murdock continues to be the resourceful investigative secretary that she can be. I don't know, her role in the show gets very confusing. She's just there, I guess, but a very good "she's just there". Either she's the lowly secretary for Nelson & Murdock or she's totally doing more lawyer-esque work than either Nelson or Murdock. You be the judge.

So an Irish mob gets hit hard, Rambo-style. An entire mob meeting is shot to hell from an unknown assailant. The hit is initially credited to a group of hitmen, but it's later deduced that it was one hitman, and that hitman is Frank Castle, also known as "The Punisher". Jon Bernthal's Punisher is bad to the ass. Every time he's on screen, he steals the show. Kind of wonder why they bothered letting the freakin' Punisher have a recurring role in the Daredevil series when all he does is steal the spotlight. Sure, the Daredevil stuff continues to be an awesome spectacle to watch, but we just get the added on awesome dosage with The Punisher. Watching the Punisher interact with people also is a treat. My favorite is the episode in which the Punisher visits a pawn shop, purchases a NYPD mobile communications rig, the surveillance tape that shows he was there, and the shells for the shotgun behind the counter. When the pawn shop owner offers him child porn for $100, the Punisher beats him to death with a baseball bat. Jon Bernthal's performance comes off very "Shane-like" in its presentation. For those that don't know, Jon Bernthal played Shane in the first two seasons of The Walking Dead, and the performance here is very much reminiscent of that. Watch clips of The Walking Dead from the first two seasons and then watch clips of Bernthal as The Punisher...the only thing missing is the head rubbing. I'm not even joking here, there's a video compilation on YouTube of every time Shane rubs his head, and that alone has become a meme.

On the other end of things, is Elodie Young as Elektra. She's...boring. She's not bad, it's just that this sort of inclusion in the story really didn't give her anything interesting to do. This is where I feel the season starts to drag. The Punisher stuff and courtroom drama is all fascinating to follow, but the stuff with The Hand, Elektra and the resurrected Nobu just kind of drags. It already feels like every Marvel show is dragging at some point. Her fight scenes with Daredevil are pretty cool to watch, but the way she just keeps barging into Matt's life and ruining everything while the Punisher courtroom case is going just sucks the life out of me. My least favorite bit is where she and Matt are running around an office trying to find somebody's secrets (I wasn't even paying attention at this point, because it seemed to go on forever). That and "The Hand"? Jesus Christ, the Hand. Thank God Stick, the best character in the Netflix MCU, came back or else I would not given a collective shit about anything going related to The Hand.

The series picked back up with the inclusion of Vincent D'Onofrio reprising his role as Wilson Fisk, only this time he's in prison. He gets a "catch up" episode where we learn what life was like for Wilson once he went to prison, and learn that he still loves Vanessa is doing everything he can to get out of prison in a reputable time frame to see his beloved again. There's a tense scene between Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk in which Matt promises that Wilson will never get out of jail and that he'll never see Vanessa again, and Wilson literally starts pounding the shit out of him. Forget that it could net more years behind bars for him, he just wails on a lawyer and walks away completely clean. Remind me why he's in prison, again?

The downfall of Nelson & Murdock occurs in this season. Matt and Foggy that just because Matt's Daredevil, they can't be lawyer buddies anymore and end their partnership. No, really, there's more to it than that but it literally just stems from the fact Matt's more preoccupied with his Daredevil antics than he is accurately defending the Punisher for his crimes. The Punisher ends up throwing the case anyway, just because he's a psychopath badass, but still it derails their friendship and partnership and by the end of it all, Foggy joins with Jeri Hogarth, of the Jessica Jones variety, and partners with her law firm. As all this is going on, Karen has taken it upon herself again to do more investigative and lawyer work than either Matt or Foggy and ultimately is the driving force behind the defense of Frank Castle. She finds information on Frank's family and learns that they were all slaughtered in a gang shootout, and that Frank took a bullet in the head in the process. She came to sympathize with Frank and ultimately try to push him not to be such a vindictive psychopath, but the Punisher that we know and love surfaces again and tells her that he cannot change who he is.

The end of the season is just bitter and said. Sure Daredevil and Elektra triumph over the hand and seemingly kill Nobu (again), plus the Punisher debuts with his skull image on his abdomen, but Nelson & Murdock is no longer a thing, Matt and Karen's relationship failed, Matt and Foggy hate each other. I know it's all going somewhere, hopefully a lot of it is resolved in season 3 that supposed to air in 2018, but I can't wait that long.  Plus, the series ends with Matt revealing to Karen that he's Daredevil. It's pretty sweet, and totally unexpected. I don't know how it segways into The Defenders when Matt's stopped being Daredevil, but I'm sure they'll explain it. Matt's just like "I'm Daredevil, or rather I was Daredevil".

All in all, Daredevil season 2 is a mixed bag. It's still Daredevil, so it's going to be a fun thrill ride at least part of the time. The Punisher and court room stuff, again, is still very much worth the watching of the series. It's once Elektra and the Hand get involved that the show kind of just swaps between flatlining and high-stepping. The Punisher would do something that would spike the interest in the show and then Elektra would say or do something that would just slow everything to a crawl. It's still a pretty great season and I loved in during my watch through of it, I just know there are things they could improve on. Stick is always a great inclusion. Karen does her stuff and is fun to watch. Foggy's schtick of arguing against Matt being Daredevil gets a little old, but I'm sure it does for the character of Foggy Nelson as well. Daredevil season 2 is a great entry in the Defenders saga, but hopefully season 3 is the be-all, end-all entry in the series of Daredevil that it's being rumored to be.